Shepherding a Chinese American church often poses significant challenges to an immigrant pastor’s sense of identity. This identity crisis is particularly common among pastors from Asia, especially those from China, who initially envision their ministry as serving Chinese immigrant congregations in North America.
When Calling Meets Immigration
The decision of immigrant pastors to minister in North America appears to offer several advantages. It provides better educational opportunities for their children and grants them greater freedom and public space to articulate and practice their faith. Yet the cost of this decision is often far greater than many anticipate. The challenge extends beyond questions surrounding a pastor’s spiritual authority within the congregation; it also raises deeper questions about the viability and sustainability of pastoral ministry in the North American context.
To serve effectively in a Chinese American church, pastors must address a more fundamental issue: securing a legal status that allows them to live and minister in the country. In other words, pastoral ministry in North America is not merely a theological or ecclesiastical calling. It is also deeply intertwined with immigration policies, visa regulations, and the ongoing uncertainty surrounding one’s legal right to remain in the country. For many immigrant pastors, the question of identity is therefore inseparable from the question of immigration status.
Waiting in the Wilderness
In recent years, an increasing number of pastors and their families have completed their theological education and chosen to serve in Chinese American churches. The only viable pathway for immigrant pastors and families to legally reside and minister in the country is through a church-sponsored religious worker visa.
Typically, pastors enter the United States on an R-1 Non-immigrant Religious Worker visa, while their spouses and children receive R-2 dependent status as Non-immigrant Dependents of an R-1 Religious Worker. Although R-1 status allows a pastor and his family to remain in the United States for up to five years, this status is not usually granted in a single five-year period. Instead, pastors are often approved for an initial 30 months and must apply for an extension of another 30 months after completing their first period of service.1
It is precisely at this point that the question of pastoral stability arises. Few churches desire to experience prolonged periods without consistent pastoral leadership. Consequently, the most practical way to ensure continuity in ministry is for churches to assist their pastors in pursuing permanent residency once they have completed the required two years of continuous ministerial service.
In the past, the transition from an R visa to permanent residency often took only six to eighteen months. Today, however, the process has become increasingly uncertain. Many pastors now face years of waiting with no clear timeline for approval, and some have exhausted the full five-year duration of their R-1 status before obtaining permanent residency, forcing them to leave the country and disrupting the continuity of pastoral ministry within their churches.2
The consequences extend far beyond immigration paperwork. Delays in the permanent residency process can leave churches without stable pastoral leadership and place significant emotional, financial, and vocational pressure on pastors and their families. As a result, immigration status has become one of the most pressing challenges facing immigrant pastors serving Chinese churches in North America.
When Shepherds Become Employees
The anxiety experienced by pastoral families stems not only from uncertainty about whether they will be able to remain legally in the United States, but also from the way churches perceive pastors whose legal status depends upon the church’s sponsorship and support.
Pastors are entrusted by God with spiritual authority to shepherd and govern his church through the ministry of the gospel. Yet, pastors often find themselves heavily dependent upon the church’s institutional and financial support to maintain their legal status and continue serving in pastoral ministry.
Under the R-1 visa framework, the church serves as the sponsoring employer, while the pastor is legally classified as an employee of the church. This arrangement creates an inherent tension between the pastor’s spiritual office and his legal dependence on the institution he is called to lead. As a result, it can significantly affect both the exercise of pastoral authority and the congregation’s perception of that authority.
While Scripture presents pastors as those entrusted with the spiritual oversight of God’s people, the realities of immigration law can place them in a vulnerable position, where their ability to remain in the country and continue in ministry depends largely on the ongoing support of the congregation they serve.
Pastors are called to devote themselves to shepherding God’s people. However, when they do not know when or even whether their green card will be approved, it becomes difficult for them to fully invest in long-term ministry. They are constantly confronted with questions such as: What if the green card is never approved? How should we plan for our children’s education? Should we begin preparing to leave the United States? Will the church’s ministries and future plans be able to continue? These concerns gradually drain pastors’ emotional and mental energy, shifting their attention away from shepherding God’s people and toward the ongoing challenges of maintaining legal status in the United States.
On the other hand, when the church functions as the sponsoring employer, a different kind of tension begins to emerge. Because church leaders know that immigrant pastors often depend upon the church’s sponsorship to obtain permanent residency, the relationship between the church and the pastor can gradually become more complicated than a purely pastoral relationship.
The complexity of the relationship between the church and the pastor becomes particularly evident during the process of obtaining permanent residency. During this period, pastors are generally unable to move freely to another church or respond to a different ministry call without potentially jeopardizing their immigration status. As a result, some churches may begin to assume that their pastors are unlikely to leave soon. This assumption can subtly reshape the dynamics of the relationship.
Instead of viewing the pastor primarily as one who has been called by God to shepherd the congregation, the church may begin to view him as someone whose future is dependent upon the institution’s continued support. The imbalance of power created by this arrangement can make it more difficult for pastors to exercise spiritual leadership freely and for churches to receive pastoral correction humbly. Churches may become less attentive to the pastor’s well-being when they perceive that his dependence on the church for immigration sponsorship significantly limits his ability to pursue other ministry opportunities.
The result of the imbalance of power between the pastor and the church is that both the church and the pastor may begin to relate to one another not primarily through the lens of calling and gospel partnership, but through the realities of employment, sponsorship, and immigration status.
A Heavenly Mindset for a Pilgrim Church
The author of Hebrews reminds us that both pastors and congregations are called to live as a suffering community in this world, for our ultimate homeland is not here but in heaven. Drawing on Israel’s journey through the wilderness, Hebrews presents the church as a pilgrim community journeying through a world of suffering and uncertainty toward God’s promised rest. Therefore, as the people of God, we are called to be a wilderness people—sojourners who journey by faith toward our heavenly homeland and the city that is to come.
Through this lens, both the church and its pastors are strangers and exiles on the earth, seeking a homeland that points to a heavenly rest. Therefore, both the church and its pastors are called to walk together in unity, encouraging one another as fellow pilgrims on the path of sanctification until the day they meet the Lord. Fixing our eyes on the homeland that is above rather than on an earthly one enables us to understand our identity in this world more clearly.
The concept of the church as a suffering community teaches that the ultimate interests of both pastors and congregations do not lie in this present age. Pastors need to realize that immigration uncertainty is a modern wilderness experience through which God teaches their families to fix their hope on his eternal promises rather than on earthly security. The answer to immigration uncertainty is not ultimately immigration security, but a renewed vision of the heavenly homeland. The calling to pastoral ministry is not ultimately determined by permanent residency, citizenship, or security in an earthly homeland, but by the Lord who has called us to seek a better country—a heavenly one. Pastors need to be reminded that God does not call them to pursue permanent earthly citizenship through their service in the church. Rather, he calls them to shepherd his pilgrim people, helping them discern their true spiritual condition and recognize their continual need for Christ as they journey toward their heavenly homeland. Consequently, the pursuit of earthly comfort, stability, status, or security as ultimate ends stands in tension with God’s calling for his people. To embrace a life in the wilderness means that the church community stands in solidarity with those who suffer in this world rather than distancing itself from them.
Rather than leaving pastors to navigate the uncertainties of permanent residency on their own, church leaders should model gospel-shaped care by leading their congregations to come alongside them. They should support their pastors, walk with them, and share in both their joys and their sorrows. The church should not view its pastors primarily as employees, but as fellow members of God’s household, united in Christ and adopted into his family (Ephesians 2:19). Pastors are fellow members of the body of Christ who have been entrusted with the ministry of the gospel. The church is called to bear these burdens and walk alongside them as fellow pilgrims, journeying by faith toward the heavenly homeland.
This brings us back to the central question of this article: What does the future hold for immigrant pastors, and when will we no longer have to worry about our legal status in this world?
The honest answer is that we do not know. We do not know when immigration policies will change, nor whether they will become more favorable in the future. Yet we do know one thing: our heavenly home is not here.
Precisely because our ultimate homeland is not found in this world, God calls pastors into the wilderness. He calls them to shepherd his people as strangers and exiles, fixing their eyes on the heavenly city that is to come. In the words of Hebrews, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). The calling of immigrant pastors, therefore, is not merely to endure uncertainty, but to lead God’s people through the wilderness with a heavenly mindset.
- Meredith W. Barnette, “Understanding the EB-4 Green Card Backlog for Religious Workers and What You Can Do About It,” Garfinkel Immigration Law Firm, June 3, 2025, https://www.garfinkelimmigration.com/2025/06/03/understanding-the-eb-4-green-card-backlog-for-religious-workers-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
- Until January 2026, R-1 religious workers were generally required to remain outside the United States for one year after reaching the five-year maximum period of stay. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), under the Department of Homeland Security, removed this one-year foreign residency requirement in January 2026. For further discussion, see Isaul Verdin, “The R-1 Visa’s One-Year Waiting Period Is Gone: What the 2026 Rule Change Actually Means,” Verdin Law, March 2026, https://www.verdinlaw.com/post/the-r-1-visas-one-year-waiting-period-is-gone-what-the-2026-rule-change-actually-means.
